


Downpour

by randomalia (spilinski)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Ascension, Atlantis, Episode Tag, F/M, M/M, Pining John Sheppard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 14:07:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4224627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spilinski/pseuds/randomalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back during the first year they came to Atlantis, there was this game they played.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Downpour

**Author's Note:**

> Set during season 2's episode Epiphany.

Back during the first year they came to Atlantis, there was this game they played. They had the Wraith bearing down on them, Genii soldiers on every other planet they visited and they kept losing people. And so, understandably, some of the ones that were left started getting nostalgic for home.

Nostalgia was fairly high on Rodney's list of things he found infuriating in other people (along with stupidity, wilful ignorance and optimism): he told his scientists they were all misty-eyed, slack-jawed incompetents who had nothing to worry about, because as soon as they could dial Earth again he would personally escort them through the gate, never to return. John had the idea, looking at the manic gleam in Rodney's eye, that by personally escort he meant putting a swift boot to their asses.

Later, when they were alone in the lab, Rodney had paused in his typing and said, "You know what I don't miss about Earth?"

John made a face he hoped wasn't too encouraging.

"Hmm," Rodney said thoughtfully. "Supermarkets. What about you?"

"Penguins," John said seriously.

"What? Oh, fine, you don't get to play."

"All that waddling," John continued, "And the regurgitating," and Rodney had gotten so worked up he pushed John out the door.

The next morning though, he thumped his breakfast tray down at the table and said, "Also, roads lacking appropriate signage. And Fox News."

John swallowed his bite of toast, remembering how he lay in bed last night thinking of all the many things he was happy to give up back home. "Malls," he said, and Rodney hummed in agreement, already throwing food into his mouth at speeds faster than light.

They kept playing until John forgot what he had said and what he hadn't, though every now and then Rodney would add something to the list. Once they were off-world, all four of them huddled in a shallow cave waiting out a thunderous storm and Rodney had said, "Rain. Definitely rain."

John had eyeballed him. "I don't think that's in the rules."

Next to him Teyla had exchanged a look with Ronon: those wacky Earth guys at it again.

"Of course it's in the rules. I made the rules. I don't miss rain."

"Kinda hard to miss it," Ronon had remarked, staring placidly out at the torrent.

*

When he sees Elizabeth again, John will be sure to tell her how he has discovered the path to Ascension. Elizabeth will like that. She just won't be expecting that the big secret seems to be making yourself as boring as possible. Meditate all day, every day. Eat only because you have to, and because it gives you an excuse to sit around and look serene with your eyes open, for a change. Try not to do or think about anything except ascending, because you're small and finite and not good enough as you already are. And when someone who doesn't belong there shows up, give him clothing, and pity.

John spends weeks sitting inside his stupid little hut, one fine day after another. His body's sore and everyone in the cloister is crappy company for about twelve hours out of the day.

He doesn't want company, though, he wants to know what's taking his team so long to come and spring him from hippie prison. Teer comes by with breakfast every morning: fruit, bread, water. She's clear-eyed and knowing, and sets the small dish on the wooden table with a gentle click looking like unhappiness has never touched her face.

When John has been in the cloister for a month he makes a little notch on the wooden bedpost. It's only for counting the days, but he knows what Rodney would say if he saw it.

It's at that point that he decides to play the game by himself: things he doesn't miss about home, though he's too angry to think of anything at first.

By the time he decides he's okay not doing mission reports, he realises that Lorne is probably doing all the mission reports now, on account of having John's job and John's team, because they all think John is dead and have gone on without him.

*

The left-hand bedpost becomes scored with dozens of tiny scratches, they're rough under John's fingertips. That's how many mornings he's woken up to this ceiling, that's how many days it's taken for Teer and her people to break him down, wear through him like water on rock: he's thinking next time, maybe he shouldn't bother fighting.

There's a day, sunny and blue, same as always, when John starts listening to Teer and Avrid instead of blocking them out. They talk about shedding the body, the ground, the air; existing as pure energy.

John watches the sky while they talk. He thinks about taking an F-16 through sky like that, about the moment you finish your ascent and level out above everything, in the clear, flying. He notices the clouds aren't moving.

That afternoon he starts running again, going through long bright fields and green thickets, he runs until his chest is heaving and his legs burn. Sweat tickles his temples and the small of his back. Then he eats lunch and sits down with the rest of the group, his skin thrumming with satisfaction and weariness.

*

Somewhere along the line he accedes to routine. He follows Avrid in to meditation; he closes his eyes. He thinks a little about what it would be like to be energy, what he would do. He could destroy the Wraith. He could go anywhere.

Avrid says he can hear the beats in John's chest, he laughs joyously at the thought of _not having to have my existence measured like that, one day._

(There are one hundred and seventy-seven cuts on John's bedpost. He has half the ammo he had when he started. There're two bruises on his shin, one scratch on his cheek and in his beard, too many grey hairs to count.

Last night Teer had murmured his name three times, pressing soft lips to his forehead.)

"I'll go," he'd said at the portal, but he never meant like this.

*

It's only hours later they come for him, but John doesn't bother to think there's any significance in that. It just means he was weak, that he stopped using his head, like always. Teer wants John to go with her, right there and then, and he doesn't know how she could still think there was a choice between her people and his family. There's never been a choice, there's never even been a question.

Behind him stand Elizabeth, Rodney, Telya, Ronon, Carson. They're all red-cheeked from exertion and sunlight, they've got the same lines and eyes and gestures they had six months ago. In front of him Teer is burning away in a haze of light.

*

Back in the city some people in the corridors do a double-take at his beard. Some people show a little more interest than he thinks is necessary, and Rodney recounts an informal survey he once took of the science staff, which apparently offered some telling results about the inverse relationship between trustworthiness and facial hair.

"And, what, plain old human women not exotic enough for you?"

John ignores him, sitting on the infirmary bed, one hand splayed on his own thigh while Carson tuts and hmms and takes his blood pressure.

"Should we be expecting romantic visits from another plane of existence now? I mean, sure, it's late but I'm willing to bet the kitchen staff would happily rise from their beds in order to prepare a picnic basket for an Ancient and her latest conquest. That would be you, in case it wasn't apparent."

" _McKay_ ," John barks, and Rodney falls silent.

Carson says he's fine and John goes straight to his quarters. The room has the feel of being lived in, and he supposes that's because he was here just this morning. It's not dusty, the shower is still damp. One of his golf magazines is perched precariously on the end of the bed and John can't remember leaving it there, or even reading it at all.

Out the window, Atlantis is wreathed in sea mist, grey, austere and beautiful.

*

Late that night, freshly shaven and reaquainted with the goings-on of Atlantis (nothing new, but some stuff he'd forgotten, like who was off-world and status of requisitions and what he was supposed to do tomorrow) John finds himself in the secondary lab, looking over Rodney's shoulder, shifting three empty coffee mugs out of the way so he can lean on the bench.

"So, how many breakthroughs did you make while I was away?"

Rodney pauses in his committed typing just long enough to give him a look of annoyance. "You weren't away, you were -"

"Away," John finishes. "Six-months-in-a-cloister away." He's maybe still feeling a little pissed off.

"Yes, true, but not for us. We didn't even stop to eat while you were enjoying your exile in Happy Monk land." Rodney seems to think this over: "How did you not go mad with boredom?"

"I whittled statues of Jesus and communed with nature."

"Ha. Ha. I suppose you were busily occupied with, with tender female company." John never really knows why Rodney sounds bitter about the women John occasionally - rarely - hardly _ever_ meets; he's pretty sure that Rodney wouldn't want to get romantic with an ascended woman himself, given the opportunity.

"Oh, you know what?" Rodney continues. "You could have played the game. Perfect opportunity."

"What, things I didn't miss?"

"Exactly," Rodney clatters his keys, casting glances at John, John's right shoulder, John's hand where it rests against the smooth tabletop.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't really thinking of that kind of stuff at the time."

"Really? I would have thought -"

John pushes away from the bench. "There wasn't anything," he says after a crisp pause.

"Oh," Rodney says. Then, "Was it weird?"

"Pretty weird."

"Because we came as fast we could. I mean, the ratio was such -"

"Yeah, time dilation, I get it," John replies, and decides it's probably a good time for a run.

*

If there's one thing John knows he's good at (besides flying, and naming Star Wars planets in alphabetical order), it's business as usual. Family dinners and combat operations have taught him how to maintain a blank surface, so no one gets in, no one sees anything more than their own reflections. It's what most people want to see anyway.

He spent six months trapped away in a place where the sun hit the soil in the same way, day after day, but here on Atlantis he was gone for a couple of hours. So he wakes up the next morning and takes his run, eats breakfast in the mess like he did it yesterday and the day before that, goes to his meetings and his training sessions and pecks out a few brief reviews to send back to Earth next time they call. He lifts a lazy eyebrow if he passes Rodney and says nothing.

Business as usual.

*

"John," Elizabeth says to him one evening, deeply hesitant. "You --" She looks at her intertwined fingers and then quirks her mouth wryly. "Didn't think we were coming, did you?"

John tries his nonchalant expression. "Well," he replies. "I figured Lorne'd be after my job. Between you and me, he's been looking pretty hopeful whenever I get shot or something."

Elizabeth smiles, beautifully and with resignation.

Then, "I think he stole a clay figurine off my desk," she says.

"Actually, that was McKay. Gave it to Teyla for her birthday. You know how he gets."

"Ah. Well, maybe I'll steal something of his next time I need a gift."

John looks down over the railing to the ocean, too far away to see the waves clearly.

"I don't think anyone would enjoy a picture of McKay's cat," he says, watching the water shift towards the pier and away again.

"And he'd probably do anything to get it back," Elizabeth returns, and John takes a careful breath, lets it out into the large, dark sky.

*

They get clearance to check out P3X-759 and although John can see Rodney bristling with pent-up words, once they step through the gate Teyla keeps all talk at bay by telling them about the Athosian camps. It's like a late Spring day on the planet, which has been culled recently; the remnants of buildings are smoking into the warm air. Tall trees covered in white flowers surround the village; every now and then the scent drifts over to where they all pick through the ruins; the flowers smell like gooseberries.

Ronon toes a Wraith body lying face down in the dirt and looks almost satisfied.

There's crops in a field beyond the village, completely untouched. On Earth they would have been torched, but John supposes they meant nothing to the Wraith, who already got everything they thought was worth eating.

Back in Atlantis the light is dim where it falls through the stained glass, rain clouds pass the control tower like a train of elephants, soft-bellied and quiet. Elizabeth listens to their report with a familiar kind of sadness and schedules Major Lorne's team to escort the botanists back to the planet for crop harvesting, adding, "Waste not, want not, as my grandmother would say."

John has a dream that night about the ruined village. All the dead people watch his team pulling out the plants, the long stalks shivering in the wind.

*

It's an accident: John's fingers skid over the flat surface of the interface map and end up well past where he intended. McKay frowns when the transporter doors open and they're in a completely different corridor, dim and empty, one of the city's lonely places the expedition can't afford to fill.

Rodney turns back around; John's still standing in the transporter.

"Where were you going?" he asks.

John shrugs.

"Well, I know where I was going, and that was to bed, for the first time in twenty-six hours. Some of us have real work to do and need to take our meagre amounts of rest when we can find it."

John's shoulders seem to be too tight to shrug again, so he just plants his hands on his hips. The hallway seems endless behind Rodney; they must be in one of the pier maintenance walks.

Rodney is looking at him with narrowed, assessing eyes.

"Are you having some kind of post-traumatic enforced-vacation-time-with-Ancient-hippies breakdown?"

"No."

"Post-traumatic watched-Ronon-eat-potato-salad-with-his-hands-at-lunch breakdown? Because I know those images will stay with me for a _very_ long time."

"Not having a breakdown, Rodney."

"And yet, here we are, in the outskirts of the city."

"Pressed the wrong button," John says casually.

This is the point where Rodney would get back into the transporter and John would stop teetering in its doorway and they would go back, but they don't. The air is colder down here and stale. John's fingers are cold which is weird when his heart's beating so fast.

Rodney sweeps a gaze around the walls and ceiling. "I should probably make Radek come down here to look for potential maintenance issues," he says. "Actually, make that Bartlett. His coding is aggressively bad and at least if he blows something up down here, he won't take me with him."

He looks back at John with the same critical gaze. "Look, I'm tired," he says.

"Yeah," John nods. He can see it. He can feel it, too.

If he listens carefully enough he can hear the waves against the side of the pier: to and fro, reaching and leaving. It's like they never get anywhere, stuck in that same repetitive movement. He doesn't understand the point of it. Constancy has never been John's style.

"You would have hated it in there," he says then.

"I never liked camping," Rodney agrees. "Of what possible benefit could it have been to my intellect? I tried explaining this to my teachers - and I use that term loosely - but they insisted there was more to education than the structured environs of the classroom. Not quite in those words, though."

"Too much grass and pollen," John adds. "Flowers and stuff."

He'd thought of it at the time: anyone with allergies would go mad after a few of those summery, earthy days.

"Yes, well. As much as I will no doubt regret saying this, what with the literally thousands of life-sucking aliens intent on our destruction, I suspect I would have been supremely bored. Too much," he makes a face, "peace."

The transporter doors close quietly as John steps out into the hall.

*

"Sheppard -- oh, you're kidding me. Really?" Rodney says to him with wide eyes once John has stepped close enough, leaned close enough to make his intentions clear. "Seriously?"

"What?"

"This, I mean - seriously?"

"You figure it out," John murmurs.

"You could say," Rodney replies. His jaw is rough with stubble when John touches fingertips to it and his eyelids dip as John follows the touch with his mouth. John holds Rodney's head, his neck, drawing him all at once into new, slow kisses.

He doesn't know what will happen tomorrow. Anything could, anything at all. All he wants right now is the next touch of Rodney's mouth, the next flush of warmth, the next breath.

Just before his people came for him, there was a moment when John felt clear about his life for the first time in a while. Teer had been smiling sedately at her brother and talking about dissipating from one plane to another and letting go all burdens. John had remembered Rodney's hands going snap snap snap, dismissing and entreating; Rodney's blue eyes and quick mouth. Rodney who loves food and coffee and soft shirts. He's losing his hair. He cradles his computer tablet like a wound. He has a bright, awkward smile.

Those people in the cloister thought they could be pure energy and still experience thunderstorms, but they'll never find out what it's like to stand in the downpour.

Rodney slides a hand around John's ribs and kisses him once, twice, and John hangs on and hangs on and hangs on.


End file.
